Preparing the Next Generation of AI Leaders

MBAi director Andy Fano shares how the program's uniquely blended curriculum trains students to be a new kind of business and technology leader.

With a mix of milestones and concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) making headlines on a seemingly daily basis, it's become clear to MBAi director Andy Fano what the program should provide to students. 

"Success in the AI era will depend on leaders who are as effective working with machine learning engineers as they are with senior business leaders," Fano said. "The goal of the MBAi program is to educate this new generation of leaders. To accomplish this, we created a curriculum that is a blend of Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and the Kellogg School of Management." 

The uniqueness of the program stems from the approach that combines key strengths from both schools. Many of the core courses were designed specifically for MBAi. Traditional computer science classes are designed to train computer scientists. By contrast, the MBAi technical courses help students develop the skills and intuitions necessary to operate effectively in a technical product management role.  

"The AI for Business class, for example, is markedly different from the AI class a computer science student would take," Fano said. "The emphasis in MBAi is on the application and practical business problems rather than theory. The same is true for other AI-focused MBAi classes."  

The curriculum also leverages the strengths of the Kellogg School of Management so students can develop technical expertise in marketing, product management, and operations. 

The emphasis on practical application is emphasized throughout the program. Students complete a full-time internship during the summer, followed by an industry capstone project. The capstone is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for MBAi students to collaborate with students from Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MSAI) program as they work to solve a client problem.  

The opportunity to bring MBAi and MSAI students together is one more way Fano believes he and his colleagues are able to prepare students to be the next generation of technology literate leaders. 

"Teams of three-to-six students work together with a leading company on a challenge posed by that company," Fano said. "The hybrid nature of the teams prepares them for the real world where they will also be operating on teams composed of people with a wide range of technical and business backgrounds."